I heard and felt Gina approach, and the floor struggling under her tremendous frame gave us ample time to be ready for her arrival. She liked for her flock to be out in the open and ready to greet her when she walked in, and after yesterday she might fly into a rage and start smashing people indiscriminately if she couldn’t find me. While her feet were still pounding on the stairs I rushed out of bed and grabbed Roni and Vanessa before heading out into the open field.
Gina’s other victims were already scrambling to get into columns, and I took my place front and center. The latecomers filled the last remaining spots, with Roni standing directly behind me, and we all eagerly watched the door. When the resounding steps from going up stairs became subtle crashes on the floor we knew there were only a few seconds left until Gina burst in.
The knob turned, and with an ear-splitting crash the door flew inward. Gina bounded after it, practically skipping across the threshold, and kicked off her shoes so that they crashed into the bed. My fellow inmates cheered for her, a gesture that she had never acknowledged before and I doubted she ever would, while she approached the terrarium. She pressed her body against the glass, flattening her thighs and stomach, and set her hands atop the roof while she beamed down at us. Her eyes looked manic, like she was in the middle of a rampage, and her mouth was spread in a permanent toothy grin.
“Ah, obedience, that’s what your Goddess likes to see!” she declared. “But it has come to My attention that for some of you, faith in Me is wavering. I have scarcely engaged with My worshippers, leading to an insolent high priest and open mutiny against My power. But that ends today!” Her booming voice rattled the walls around us, and with a single flick of her finger the freed the latch for a door on the roof. “Will My high priest please step forward so that I can correct this streak of insubordination?”
Well, this was it. After six years of tormenting me, Gina had finally decided to end it. I stepped forward to separate myself out so no one else would get caught as collateral damage, either when she snatched me up or smashed me on the spot. After years of ostensibly leading them, the least I could do was not take them with me when I went down.
There was a flash of white and a body-rocking impact, and next thing I knew I had been snatched up by Gina’s fist. My stomach lurched when she yanked me out, nearly forcing my insides to rocket out of my body. The abrupt stop had the same effect in the opposite direction, and for the first time in years I felt nauseated from being handled by Gina.
Her fingers opened, and I found myself staring up at her magnificent face. “You have displeased Me, priest,” she began, her expression belying the threat of her words. “For years you have tried to escape Me, failed to pay Me the proper respect, and led My worshippers astray. Today I will rekindle their faith in two ways – first, I will show them what happens to insolent bugs like you, then I will show them a miracle.”
“My Goddess, please, let me repent!” I began. Better late than never, I hoped. “Put me back in with them, treat me like the common dirt I am, make me nothing more than a speck on Your divine cheek, just please don’t crush me!”
“I’m going to do all of those things and more,” Gina purred, reaching her free hand into her bag. “And don’t think I wasn’t already going to – a Goddess does not need suggestions from the buzzing of worthless insects.” She withdrew her hand, revealing a tiny stone disc with a star drawn on it and a shrunken person pinned between it and her forefinger. The tiny person screamed, no doubt totally unaware of the gravity of his situation while Gina rotated the disc so that it was horizontal.
With a quick swoop Gina deposited me in the center of the disc, leaving me sprawled in the middle of the star, and snatched up the new prisoner with the same movement. He continued screaming, but Gina’s booming voice drowned him out. “Stay perfectly still,” she demanded, “and don’t make a sound. You can beg Me for your life when this is finished.” She maneuvered her fingers, and in no time the new prisoner had been consumed by her hand, his constant screams now squelched by her fingers.
Gina began chanting in a language I did not recognize with words that sounded like she was talking backwards. The hand with the captive loomed over me, its fingers tightening the further into the ritual she went. Electricity danced inside her blue irises, arcing through her pupils, and the volume of her chant increased simultaneously with the sound of bones cracking above. Rivulets of blood dripped from her hand onto me, and the chanting became louder as it continued to pour. My face and hair were drenched and still it came, covering my entire body. Through the curtain of blood I saw strands of her hair stand and the star I was inside began to glow white. Finally, at the chant’s climax, all of the blood suddenly vanished, and Gina looked ecstatic while her face loomed over me.
“It is done,” she declared, her voice even more menacing than usual. “Now it is time for you to suffer my wrath, pipsqueak.” She dumped the disc I had been standing on over, sending me sliding over the side. I fell the entire length of her body, rushing past her waist and knees in less than a second, flailing my arms and legs in a desperate attempt to slow my descent. The floor continued rushing up toward me however, and I expected to be dashed on the floor any second.
Instead of being splattered against the carpet, however, I survived the fall from hundreds of feet up. It hurt, but since I had expected to be killed on impact it was rather a surprise. Maybe the carpet really was soft enough that I’ve been worried about falling all this time for nothing?
Gina’s deep, booming laughter pulled me out of contemplation. “I’ve been wanting to do this for years,” she said. “Ever since you first came home with Fulda I wanted to step on you, stomp on you, grind you beneath My foot, and you’ve only made Me more pissed since then with your constant whining and useless fawning.” She raised one stockinged foot into the air far enough that her knee touched her chest, letting her foot hover over me. “Time for Me to blow off some steam.”
Her foot raced downward, and before I could so much as shield my face her heel slammed into me with millions of pounds of force. Pain shot through my body and I felt myself being compressed beneath Gina’s tremendous weight, but even though I should have been smashed instantly I didn’t have so much as a broken bone. My relief at that was tempered by the agony coursing through my tiny body, and Gina’s foot pinning me on the floor.
Gina lifted her heel, giving me a reprieve from the oppressive pressure I had been under. I barely got in a breath before she brought it back down though, making pain explode through my body all over again. She did this twice more, each one worse than the last, before letting her heel rest atop me. It was far from a break, however, and she began to slowly grind her heel, causing a new kind of torment while she twisted me back and forth and drove me further into the carpet.
When her foot finally lifted I was stuck to the stocking, and the sheer violence of the movement caused me to see spots. I came unstuck when she moved her foot back and went tumbling head over feet while her sole sped past above me. Dizzy from the rotations, I landed on my back looking up at her. Despite my blurred vision I could see that Gina was glowing from her excitement.
“Crushing you like the bug you are back then would have been a waste,” she said, her voice becoming more like a demonic roar. “Now I can smash you over and over until you beg for mercy, and then stomp on you a few times more for fun. The only downside is that I don’t get to feel your tiny, pathetic body crunch beneath My foot.”
Fighting through the pain I managed to get up and stand unsteadily. Before I could stagger away though her foot flew forward, caught me on the head with her passing big toe and knocked me prone again. The ball of her foot slammed down atop me, and the misery of being smashed shocked my body again. Gina raised her foot and brought it down on me again and again, pressing me harder into the floor each time. Her foot’s rapid barrage left me dazed and writhing from the constant resumption of torment, and it was practically a relief when her foot finally came to a rest holding me still beneath its immense weight.
Slowly, however, Gina began to raise her heel, and I gritted my teeth while the pressure built. By the time she was practically standing on her toes I was trying to scream, though nothing could get through my mouth full of skin and nylon. She pressed her foot down harder, putting me beyond the point of even trying to scream. When she began to deliberately rotate her foot back and forth it felt like she was shredding and pulverizing me simultaneously.
The constant torment made it impossible to tell how long she did it – it could have been a few seconds or ten minutes, it was all the same to me, and I wouldn’t put either past her. When she finally stopped and raised her foot, though, I was firmly stuck to her stocking, practically embedded in the nylon. Her foot continued its slow ascent until I felt it rotating to the side. For the moment it looked like my torture at Gina’s feet was on hold, and I was thankful for the reprieve.
My break only lasted a second until Gina dug her finger beneath my chest, prying me away from her foot and pressing me into her waiting thumb. She gave me a quick squeeze, causing me to double over as far as I could in her grip, and a resonating thud told me she had set her foot back on the floor. With her suffocating hold she lifted me the rest of the way to her face, where her booming laughter joined the assault.
“You were stuck to My foot!” she exclaimed through laughs. “Like a piece of old gum! Disgusting, just like you are!” She gave me another squeeze that would normally crack my bones, but instead only made me wish it had. Gina worked me over, pinching every part of my body she could get between her fingertips, delighting in the squeal I made each time. By the time she was done she held me by the ankle hard enough to sever my leg, dangling me upside down in front of her face while she watched with amusement.
“You know, I could call you My boy toy,” Gina said, batting me with a finger hard enough that I started swinging like a pendulum. “Yeah, I like that.” Another hard swat had me seeing stars. “A tiny, otherwise useless thing that I play with to My heart’s content.” A third swipe before I had even begun to slow down from the others. “Someone who does whatever I say and loves Me unconditionally. Someone in the palm of My hand.” For emphasis, she dropped me into the palm of her other hand. “What do you say, hm? Are you My boy toy?”
I saw the tips of Gina’s fingers curl inward, and I knew what was coming next. “Yes, sure, I’m your boy toy!” I desperately shouted. “I’m your little plaything!” Her fingers gradually came closer.
Gina’s blue eyes lit up. “I knew you’d agree,” she purred while her fingers continued to encroach. “You’ve always had a weird crush on Me, just like I have on you.” One of her fingertips reached me, pressing me into her palm. “Mine’s a bit more literal, though.” The rest of her fingers caught up and began forming a fist, dragging me along with them. “Besides, I’m your Goddess, right?” Her face was blocked entirely by her fingers and I was plunged into darkness, the only sensation reaching me Gina’s echoing laughter through her hand.
Inside the iron grip of her palm was an agony even beyond that beneath her foot. Her fist should have cracked my bones at the outset, but I was made to endure the titanic pressure each time she squeezed me. Gina was completely unrelenting, pressing me between her fingers so hard I imagined I would be two-dimensional by the time she was done. I could hear her own bones creaking under the pressure, as though she were so eager to crush me she would harm herself.
At last the pressure eased and her fingers opened. The first thing I saw was Gina intently staring down at me with her mountain-sized face. She looked even more relieved than I was after trying to squeeze the blood out of me, though likely for a different reason. “Hey, now that you’re My toy I can play with you however I want,” she cooed, though the threat was obvious. “You seem a little big for a toy though, don’t you agree?” Oh no. “Yeah, hold on one sec and I’ll fix that.”
Gina’s size exploded rapidly while I dwindled to a few fractions of a millimeter in her hand. She ended up incomprehensibly large as always, looking more like a living mountain than a person. While I stood in the canyon of her palm’s crease I considered whether her delusions of grandeur were really that delusional. Certainly she had the power of a goddess and there seemed to be no end to her growth, both in what she’s capable of and her height, but she used it for sheer malice.
The mountain cliff of her lips split. “This looks right, but you’re too small for Me to play with,” her voice rumbled, making my stomach flop just from her words. “I was taught to share My toys though, and I know the perfect group to share you with.” Her lips formed a miles-long grin, and she took a bounding step toward the terrarium.
“No Gina, don’t!” I protested. “If you put me in there, they’ll kill me!” My pleas fell on deaf ears, if it fell on any at all. Her titanic hand was already sliding through the door in the roof, with me only sticking to her palm by virtue of her skin’s oils.
“Attention, loyal subjects!” she boomed, vibrations from her voice weakening the weak hold keeping me in her hand. “As a reward for your devotion and faith in Me, I am giving you My favorite toy for the rest of the blessing’s duration! If you can find the little pipsqueak, be as rough as you want – while My blessing lasts, you can’t break him!”
A coarse grinding filled my ears and the skin around me went taut. I looked up and saw a monolithic finger inexorably scraping toward me, the spacious plane of Gina’s manicured fingernail flush with her skin. With nowhere to go it ran into me, and with a quick rush dug me out of my cover within her palm. She dragged me the length of her palm, and with a flick threw me from her hand and sent me tumbling downward into the terrarium.
I landed hard and skipped several times before finally coming to a stop. Before standing I took a second to shake the cobwebs out of my head, then surveyed the area around me. No one too close that I could see, and if I could get back into the house I might be able to keep it that way.
The ground rumbled, breaking my train of thought, then it shook again with a crash. A dirty, tattered running shoe was a few inches from me, and I looked up to see a pair of long, shapely legs that never seemed to end until they reached a pair of black running shorts. Without even having to see the rest, I knew it was Roni. Whether she had seen me though was a whole other issue. This was already much more complex than I would have liked.